


winding road & endless sky

by orphan_account



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Archery, Autumn-Winter, Bows and Arrows, Castles, ENJOY!!!, Gen, I can't tag so just read it, I don't know if it's really medieval, I'm making this magic system and world up as I go, Swordfighting, all the characters in the tags will come in at one point don't worry, do seasons count as tags??, i think you'll like it, i'm just typing in all the fantasy stuff i can think of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27438271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Too much fire and broken automail, watchtowers and rescue missions, flowing cloaks and pink qipaos, fallen leaves and dead things, longbows and white smoke, cairns and country houses, cobblestones and icy windows, childhood friends and new alliances, philosophy and crescent moons, endless questions with no explanations, old manors with older stories, and more secrets than can be safely kept.Or,Ed doesn’t want to rely on anyone, Mei changes her mind often and without warning, and Al knows when to stand up as well as stand down.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 20





	1. leaves

**Author's Note:**

> My brain: hey I have an idea  
> Me: no  
> My brain: idea?  
> Me: no. I have work to do.  
> My brain:  
> My brain: Riza Hawkeye with a longbow  
> Me, yanking out my laptop: i hate you

Ed thought that if he kept looking around so suddenly, he’d get a permanent crick in his neck.

It wasn’t _his_ fault. Years of living on the run had made him paranoid; more paranoid than a boy of fifteen probably should be, but hey, that paranoia had saved his life more times than he could count. And the way the wind kept moving the reddish-brown leaves above his head and beneath his feet kept sounding like footsteps, or a swishing cloak, or the start of a rainstorm. He wasn’t sure how it could sound like all three at the same time, but it did, and he wasn’t in a position to question the way of the universe. Not anymore, at least.

Something brown fluttered past his ear, and he froze. _Leaf. It’s just a leaf, Ed, get ahold of yourself_. He shook his head, letting his pale bangs fall in his eyes, and began making his way forwards again. He’d mastered the art of silent movement years ago, and now it was almost second nature to move across the dry, curling leaf cover and around the underbrush heavy with berries without making a single sound. Well, if he was being honest with himself, he did make a few sounds—the edge of a maple leaf crunched under the toe of his boot, the bottom of the boring brown cloak Mei had made him wear in place of his red one brushed against a bush and stuck there for half a second before tugging itself free. He’d never been able to glide across the ground like a ghost the way Al could, but that was fine. He didn’t need to. 

He noticed a flash of pink out of the corner of his eye. Instead of whipping his head to face the possible threat, he kept moving, knowing its source. For some reason, Mei was exempt from her own “wear neutral colors” rule, refusing to change out of her strange pink tunic-dress that she’d called a qipao. Or at least that’s what Ed thought she had called it. He might not have heard her correctly, but he hadn’t asked again, out of what he told himself was disinterest (although the real reason was that he was still a little apprehensive of that bean-sized girl and the weird knives she called spirit daggers). Al got along with her incredibly well, of course—well, Ed supposed she had healed his legs and all, but what they had was more than just a run-of-the-mill you-saved-me-from-being-a-paraplegic-for-the-rest-of-my-life-and-now-you’re-traveling-with-us friendship. Ed didn’t really care all that much about that, actually. He even enjoyed the bean girl’s company sometimes (emphasis on _sometimes_ ), and she was damn useful too—he’d never met a better tracker.

“Someone’s been through here,” she’d said about two hours ago, pointing to a faint depression in an area of exposed earth. Most of the ground in this part of the woods was covered in a thick layer of leaf matter at this point, and the dirt underneath was devoid of grass and uncomfortably squishy in areas. This seemed to be one of those areas--upon closer inspection, the depression revealed itself to be a bootprint, the maker of which was probably human. “It’s a short Southern-style combat boot,” she’d reported, getting down on her hands and knees to better inspect the mark. “Probably cow leather, thick-soled, and the wearer was most likely a man. Under six feet, about average weight.” She looked up, and upon seeing two astounded faces looking down at her, had said “What? I just read the residual qi and inferred from there. It’s not that hard.”

After getting over the initial shock of finding out that the short, pink-clad Xingese girl that had been traveling with them for the better part of three months was apparently a master tracker, Ed had remembered that there weren’t supposed to be people in the woods. Well, there were a few roads, and beaten dirt paths interspersed among the endless trees like narrow spiderwebs, but this footprint wasn’t near either of those. There were tales that bandits made their homes in the forest, but their little group of three hadn’t encountered any of those in their travels through the woods. Yet.

Mei had found one other footprint about ten feet away from the first—it wasn’t really a footprint, more like a slight scuffed place in the leaf cover, and Mei herself had admitted that it might not be a footprint at all. But the first one definitely was, and it was the only one they had seen out here other than their own, so they had done the logical thing and began searching the area for more footprints, or—for better or for worse—the person who had made them.

Ed crouched low to survey the base of a tree. A wet-looking, purplish fungus had claimed a section of the gnarled roots, forming several dark patches. He poked one experimentally with a twig and concluded that it was rather squishy and decidedly unhelpful. Winry might have been able to tell if it was edible, but she wasn’t here. But that wasn’t important right now; what was important was trying to find whoever made that footprint, or at least foraging some food if his tracking skills failed him.

Casting the twig aside, he rose into a standing position again, arching his back in a stretch. Whoever had left that footprint was obviously long gone, they had been searching for almost an hour now and hadn’t found anyth-

_hisssTHUNK._

Ed blinked, surprised at the noise. Had someone shot an arrow? Al and Mei didn’t have bows… He tried to move away, but a tugging sensation at his right sleeve stopped him. 

Oh.

With a sinking feeling, Ed looked down.

A thin, dark, unfletched arrow was embedded in the tree next to him, the one whose gnarled, fungus-covered roots he was currently standing on. In its flight, it had caught the edge of his sleeve, effectively pinning him to the trunk. (Well, given a few minutes, he could probably yank it out, but considering how deeply it was embedded in the wood, he doubted he could do it quickly.) 

And that arrow had to come from a bow, which had to be fired by a person.

_Al and Mei didn’t have bows._

Fighting to keep his heart rate under control, Ed wrenched his gaze away from the arrow and slowly turned to the direction it had come from. 

There was a brown boot planted firmly in the reddish leaves. He noticed, somewhere distant in his mind, that it wasn’t the Southern combat boot Mei said had left the print--it was smaller in the foot, but laced up almost to the wearer’s knee. An archer’s boot. And that boot was attached to a leg, which was in turn attached to a person who was holding a huge longbow with an arrow nocked and the pointy end aimed at Ed’s face. 

Oh. Well then. 

“Who are you?” the person asked, voice low and commanding. They twitched the bow up, and he could tell that the next arrow would embed itself right between his eyes. Ed realized with a slight jolt that it was a woman, one with pale blonde hair pulled back in a tight clip and suspicious brown eyes narrowed to slits that bored into his with more aggression than he thought was truly necessary. Ed considered his options as his heart rate began to increase exponentially. He could rip the sleeve of his shirt and run as fast as he could back to where Al and Mei probably were, then make the choice to hide or fight together. Or he could fight back right now, using his alchemy to break the arrow and make a weapon. She’d only immobilized one of his arms, his flesh one—already, he was lifting his metal arm, preparing to press his palms together-

The woman’s eyes narrowed further and she pulled the bowstring back a few degrees more. Ed froze once again. Right. There was a weapon aimed at his face, and if he made any move, she would put an arrow through one of his body parts--he’d already seen the result of her aim. And after losing two, he was rather attached to his remaining ones, so that was out. So, practically gnashing his teeth in frustration, Ed decided that he would wait this out. See what she wanted, stall her, make some noise so Al and Mei could come and rescue him. Yeah, that was a good plan. Well, it wasn’t the best, but from what he had calculated, it would result in the least bloodshed.

“I asked you a question. Who are you?” 

Ed snapped his attention back to the woman. Was she a bandit? Somehow, he didn’t think there were any women in the bandit gangs, at least the ones he’d heard about. Winry would probably call him sexist and hit him with a wrench if she knew he thought that, but hey, he was practically doing this lady a favor by not thinking she was a bandit. Plus, bandits didn’t have archers. He thought.

She might be a mercenary or a bounty hunter. But why would one of the generals want him dead or captured? After realizing, he almost smacked himself in the forehead before remembering there was an arrow pointed at his face. The answer to that was pretty obvious; it was even carved into the palm of his metal hand. They’d want to use him to win a war, making him into a human weapon and sending him to the front lines. Or they would kill him for being a “demon”, that cheery little title the general public gave alchemists such as himself. The two options were equally unpleasant.

Ed decided to keep stalling, hoping to discern her motive. If she was a bounty hunter, he could just transmute a few gold coins and buy her silence. One of the pros of bounty hunters were that they could be easily bought off with a few hundred solidus. Or only a few dozen or as much as several thousand, depending on the reward they had been offered. He and Al had gotten out of numerous scrapes that way, and it hadn’t failed them yet.

“Who are you?” he asked loudly, hoping to divert attention away from himself and heighten the chances that Al or Mei would hear. He wasn’t usually a man that considered himself in need of saving by an outside party, but this was quickly shaping up to be pretty desperate, and he’d be completely backed into a corner before long if he wasn’t already. Blondie did not seem at all inclined to let go of her bowstring, and Ed knew he would be full of arrows if he tried to run now. 

The woman blinked. “Why do you need to know that?” she asked suspiciously, tightening her hold on the arrow. Ed cursed himself mentally, trying to think fast. His heart felt like it was vibrating in his chest.

“Because, uh, because I want to know if I’ve heard of you! Cause, you know, you’ve got great archery skills. You’ve probably won a tournament or two.” 

“My name is the Hawk’s Eye,” she said stiffly. So it wouldn’t be that easy. Ed glared at her bow, which was stubbornly not being lowered by the scary lady holding it. “You haven’t heard of me.” 

“But I should have! With skills like that, you should be bedecked in medals! Maybe even commanding your own squadron!” He might have been laying it on a little thick, but Ed had found in his many travels that flattery was the best and quickest way to get someone on your side. Winry always softened at least marginally whenever he buttered her up with praise before showing her his oft-mutilated automail—maybe this woman was similar.

She started to look like she was considering him. Ed tried for a winning smile, but if he was being honest with himself, it was probably more like a nervous grimace. “Mm. You think so?” she asked, in a voice that he thought might be a few degrees warmer than her previous frigid tone. 

He tried to stay calm, mind still racing like a frightened squirrel. Ed thought he had been talking loud enough for Al to hear—he should come through any moment now and bury her under some rocks. Or Mei could come dashing through the forest like some kind of tiny pink demon with a fistful of throwing knives. Either option sounded pretty great to him right now. “Yeah, I do! Now, if you could just let me go—”

“No,” she interrupted, her tone somehow becoming even colder than it had been at the start. “You’re not going anywhere. Not until Mustang gets here. We might have some questions for you.”

Ed flicked his gaze from side to side, as if a way out would suddenly appear among the trees. Al still hadn’t showed up, and there weren’t any flashes of pink at the edges of his vision that denoted Mei’s presence. He probably should have been thinking of ways to get out of this situation by himself, but instead his mind halted on one of her words. He frowned. “‘Mustang’? Like a horse?”

The woman sighed audibly. “No. Like a person. And keep quiet.”

 _Like hell I will_ , Ed thought grimly. “Who names their kid after a horse? Or is it a patron name or something?” He was grasping at straws now, trying to prolong the conversation as much as he could. Goddammit, Al, _where are you—_

“I told you to stop talking,” she said shortly. “I could always put an arrow through your other sleeve. Or somewhere more permanent.”

He gulped. If she put an arrow through his other sleeve, any alchemy would be impossible. And he absolutely did not want to find out where “somewhere more permanent” was. “Oh. Um, okay.” _All right, God, I know I don’t believe in you, but can you cut me a little slack here, even though you never have before?_

He could almost hear the divine laughter.

Ed surveyed his situation again. Hawk’s Eye (that totally wasn’t her real name, but Ed wasn’t going to push it) wasn’t showing any signs of getting tired from keeping her bowstring drawn all the way back to her shoulder, and didn’t seem in the least bit inclined to move at all. This was more than a little unsettling. Was she like this all the time? Like some sort of statue that barely even blinked?

“Hey, uh, Hawk?” he ventured after a few minutes’ silence. An idea was slowly forming in his mind, tiny bits and pieces swirling from the corners of his consciousness to create a cohesive plan. He did have the ability to think things through, at least, even if his strategies sometimes fell short. And he was a prodigy, after all. She tilted her head slightly in acknowledgement. “I have an itch on my arm. I think there’s a bug on it. Can I scratch it?” With any luck, she wouldn’t know how he used his alchemy. Not many did. 

Hawk’s Eye sighed. “Fine. Just don’t try anything.”

Oh, because he’d never do that. Ed slowly brought his automail arm around to be poised above his wrist. He brought his hand down, as if to brush an ant off his arm. Hawk didn’t react.

 _Clap_.

Thin tendrils of energy crackled between his palms. The familiar sound of earth moving to his will filled his ears, and a wall of compressed clay and dirt shot up in front of him just as an arrow flew through the air. Just in time. Finding he couldn’t break the arrow shaft pinning him to the tree, he freed his sleeve by yanking his arm downwards, feeling the fabric rip. He could hear Hawk’s Eye shouting on the other side of the barrier, and, pressing his hands to the ground beneath his boots, quickly made three other walls and a roof on top. Like a little house. Except there was no light. And all it was doing was protecting him from certain death at the hands of some lady who was way more terrifying than she had any right to be. Her shouts stopped, but whether they had been muffled by the earthen walls surrounding him or if she had just gone silent he didn’t know.

Ed allowed himself a tiny grin. He had won this time.

The sound of another half-metallic clap echoed inside the tiny earthen box, and a set of rough-hewn stairs appeared, descending into the ground. He wasn’t as assured about his alchemy when he couldn’t see what it was doing, but if he had done the calculations correctly, there was a tiny tunnel about three meters underground, curving to the right for about fifty meters, with the atoms in the earthen walls rapidly condensing to become more stable. Once he reached the end, he’d make an exit, then try to find Al and Mei.

The sounds of the forest disappeared as he descended into the earth, trying not to think too hard about how solidly he’d made the tunnel and how narrow it was. That had been a pretty good plan, if he did say so himself. Simple, but effective. One of the best he’d had in a while, given that this one had actually worked.

* * *

  
“Where the _hell_ were you?” 

Ed brushed the last of the dirt from his bangs right before Mei materialized in front of him, looking worried and angry. Behind her, Al just looked relieved. And worried, but he always looked a little worried. 

He had come out of the tunnel in a familiar stretch of forest, barely three hundred meters from their base camp, which was mainly just a few cleverly hidden bedrolls and a couple of packs stuffed inside the trunk of a hollow tree. He had been finger-combing the remaining earth from his hair when Al and Mei had come back, Mei brandishing two fistfuls of throwing knives and Al carrying a small basket of wood nuts. Ed frowned slightly--so they had just decided not to look for him? Hadn’t they heard him talking? Then he looked at Al, whose expression was growing more and more concerned, and decided, for once in his life, that now was not the time to fight back.

“I was…detained for a bit,” Ed admitted, then began his story. 

Mei was frowning throughout the entire thing, stashing her knives one by one back up the sleeves of her qipao. “So you think she was a bounty hunter?” she asked as soon as he had finished speaking, before Al even had a chance to open his mouth. 

“Probably,” Ed replied, leaning his back against a tree trunk, trying to seem unconcerned. “But her aim was much better than the other hunters we’ve encountered in the past—you remember those, Al—and she said something about a person called Mustang.”

Mei frowned deeper, this time in confusion. “That’s an Amestrian word for ‘horse,’ right?”

“My thoughts exactly,” Ed said, feeling somewhat validated. 

“Well, it’s not exactly common, but ‘Mustang’ could be someone’s surname,” Al said thoughtfully, brow furrowed. “Or a code name.”

“I didn’t think about that,” Ed acknowledged, a bit annoyed at his own ignorance. He himself had a code name, something Al and Winry had thought up after he’d been outfitted with an automail arm and leg. Winry still called him “Fullmetal” sometimes, probably because she thought it annoyed him, but he actually liked the name. It made him feel invincible, unbreakable--the person he wanted to be.

“Well, whoever she is, and whoever ‘Mustang’ is, we know we’re not alone here in the woods anymore, so we should probably move somewhere else,” Mei declared matter-of-factly. “As Edward said, they’re armed and dangerous—”

“ _We’re_ armed and dangerous,” Al interjected fairly.

“—so we should be on the defensive for the next few days,” Mei finished, as if she hadn’t heard him. She stood up, dusting off her cropped skirt. It had been longer when they had first met her, but after finding that racing through undergrowth was much more tiring when one’s dress kept getting caught in the branches, she had ruthlessly hacked at it with a pair of shears until it reached the bottom of her knees. She’d somehow managed to re-hem it at one point, although with what thread none of them knew.

Ed nodded. If Hawk’s Eye had that kind of skill, then this ‘Mustang’ person, who she had wanted to wait for after catching him, was probably even more dangerous. Right--he’d almost forgotten about the footprint. That definitely hadn’t been made by Hawk; for one thing, she definitely wasn’t six feet tall, and for another, he remembered she hadn’t been wearing combat boots. Lacing the straps on his leather pack, Ed came up with three possible truths: the print might have been made by either this “Mustang” person, a different member of Hawk’s group, or someone with no connection to either of them. 

Whichever one it was, they definitely had to be more careful.

* * *

Riza fought to retain her composure as she yanked her wasted arrow out of the tree with more force than was really necessary. A roughly triangular piece of dark, frayed cloth from the boy’s cloak fluttered down from the tip, but she managed to catch it with her other hand before it hit the ground and stuff it into her quiver. She couldn’t believe he had gotten away. Well, technically, it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t know that he could use alchemy without a transmutation circle, or that he was so proficient with it. Briefly giving into her childish annoyance, she kicked one of the earthen walls he’d created. A small piece of clay flaked off, but that was it. Ah, well. It would just be a silent anomaly until the next hard rainstorm.

She turned back towards the camp, leaving behind the giant cube. The boy was long gone anyways; there was no way he was still in there, she’d heard the crackling of a second transmutation as soon as the last wall and slid up. With his kind of skill, he’d most likely carved out a tunnel and would pop up a few dozen meters away, like a blond rabbit emerging from its burrow. He’d already bested her once, even thought it was just barely, so she couldn’t exactly face him again on her own, even as young and unassuming as he was. He was probably fifteen, at the very most. Way too young to be alone in the forest, but then again, she’d struck out when she had been seventeen, and there wasn’t much of a gap between the two.

As her feet carried her almost subconsciously towards the campsite, she went over what she had observed about the boy in her head. He had been young, but she had already established that. Perhaps he was a runaway. Was he alone? Most likely not, for two reasons: One, people never traveled through the forest alone, unless they wanted to wind up in a ditch somewhere with all of their belongings stripped from their person. And two, he had looked like he was waiting for someone. He had kept glancing around and talking louder than was necessary, likely trying to make himself heard by his companions. 

Riza sighed and tugged at her bangs, a habit from her childhood that she’d never quite managed to get rid of. A pale-haired young alchemist traveling in a group was certainly intriguing. Perhaps they could manage to track him down using the piece of cloth that had been impaled on the arrowhead. Black Hayate’s nose could sniff out deer and rabbits with unfailing accuracy--a human probably wasn’t so different. To a dog, at least. 

There was a loud shuffling of leaves to her right, interrupting her thoughts. She had already drawn her bow and nocked an arrow before realizing that the interloper was friendly. _Think of an angel and he shall appear_ , she thought fondly, smiling slightly as her beloved canine leapt onto the deer trail in front of her, tail wagging like mad and dark eyes bright. “Hello, Hayate,” she murmured, kneeling to scratch him vigorously behind both triangular ears. His eyes closed in pleasure, and his tail wagged all the harder. 

“Took you long enough to get back,” a voice said from above her. The corner of Riza’s mouth quirked upwards as she stood. Roy was standing in the place where

Black Hayate had emerged, with his arms crossed and his lips curved into the ever-present smirk she knew so well.

“I may have experienced a rather major impediment,” she replied, watching with satisfaction as his eyes lit up with curiosity.

“Oh, really?” He fell into stride next to her as they made their way towards the camp, with Hayate trotting at their heels. “Or are you just saying that so you won’t have to admit you didn’t find any food?”

Riza scoffed quietly. “I see you and Hayate haven’t come up with anything, either.” They had gone out together earlier in the morning, searching for a deer or at least a few rabbits--their supplies had been dwindling throughout the month, ever since Havoc’s injury.

He grinned. “I couldn’t find anything without the eyes of a hawk accompanying me. And I see you didn’t answer my original question.”

“Asking questions you know the answers to won’t get you anywhere.” He knew better than anyone that she would never have come back from a hunting trip without any game unless something serious had happened. And in this case, it wasn’t all that “serious”, just extremely out of the ordinary.

“True, true. So, what was the impediment?” They had reached the camp, a near-perfect circle of well-trodden dirt and a few patches of grass surrounded by a hodgepodge of tents and stacks of barrels, crates, and firewood of varying heights. A charred area of earth in the center of the circle held the remains of last night’s campfire--ash and blackened bits of wood. Breda sat next to it on a large crate, his back to them, carefully wiping down a huge crossbow.

“An alchemist,” Riza answered promptly.

Roy blinked in surprise, then scowled lightly. “You’ll have to give more detail than that.”

“Well, he also happened to be a child,” she elaborated, then related the story with as much detail as she could. When she finally finished, they were sitting on crates of their own near Breda, who had paused in his cleaning of the weapon to listen intently.

“He just clapped to use alchemy?” Roy asked, just as Breda said “A kid? How old do you think he was?”

“Yes, and most likely around fourteen or fifteen,” Riza answered both of them, lacing her fingers neatly in her lap and letting the weight of her bow over her shoulder alleviate her unease. “I’ve never seen someone use alchemy like that before. He did have an automail arm, from what seemed to be the shoulder down, and I believe a leg as well, most likely from the knee down. Do you think that would allow something like that?” She and Breda both shifted their gaze to Roy, the only alchemist in the group, and--they had assumed, at least--for miles.

He rubbed his neck, obviously deep in thought. “It seems like he used earth alchemy,” he began. “The automail, which is metal, may have allowed him a greater connection to the element, although I’ve never heard of that happening before. But the limbs alone shouldn’t have let him be able to perform clapping transmutations. He’d need a circle, or maybe a sigil.” Riza flinched slightly at the last few words before regaining her usual stone-faced demeanor. Roy seemed not to have noticed. “The sigil for the earth alchemy he seemed to have exhibited--just basic expanding and compressing transmutations--isn’t complicated at all. He could have had it on his wrist, or palm, or something like that. But it would have to be carved in.”

Riza sat up a bit straighter, remembering something. “I saw a few scratches on his metal palm when I pinned his arm to the tree. I thought they were just normal for worn automail, but now that I think about it, they were in an interesting shape. An eye, actually.” Taking one of her unfletched arrows from her quiver, she sketched a quick outline in the dark earth beneath her feet. “It’s not very visible where I’m drawing it, but it was just two curved lines with a circle in the middle. No, two circles--an iris and a pupil.” She added the second circle, paused for a moment, then scuffed the drawing out with the side of her boot.

“That’s indeed a sigil he could be using,” Roy said, letting out a breath.

Breda tapped the crossbow’s stock. “So we just have to deal with a powerful kid alchemist running loose in the forest along with all our other normal day-to-day worries such as the groups of soldiers attacking us periodically?”

“That seems to be the case,” a new voice said. All three of them looked up to see Falman walking towards them, as solemn as ever, slightly ridiculously long sword in its scabbard swinging at his side. Riza had never known why he didn’t trade it (he called it a ‘rapier’) for something more practical and less fragile-looking. But so far, it had held up in combat time and time again, so her doubts had been assuaged. He sat down next to Breda, posture ramrod-straight as ever.

Riza sighed, resisting the urge to tug on her bangs again. “And there’s something else. I’m relatively sure he’s not alone.”

“Did you see any of his companions?” Roy asked immediately.

She shook her head. “He kept stalling and talking loudly, likely trying to catch someone’s attention. It’s probably a small group, perhaps four or five.”

“What makes you say that?” Breda asked, tilting his head to the side.

“The only groups larger than that residing in the forest are bandit gangs,” she explained, “And I don’t believe they would take in a child, especially if he were a skilled alchemist.” These days, under King Bradley’s tight regime, alchemists were regarded as unholy demons--never mind the fact the king himself had a large group of them fighting in his military. The rest of the group nodded, understanding.

“Should we leave whoever they are alone, or attempt to seek them out?” Falman inquired after a moment’s pause.

Riza frowned slightly. She hadn’t taken that choice into account at all. But before she could say a word, Roy spoke up. “We seek them out,” he said, voice low. She turned to him, a bit shocked at his tone. The last time she’d heard him like this-

Oh.

As the others watched, he held up his index finger. When he wanted to, he could have quite the commanding presence—everyone had fallen silent. “That alchemist Hawkeye encountered had automail,” he continued. “Automail that was strong enough to even perform alchemy with, which, unless I’m mistaken, isn’t something easily found.” He took a breath. “If we get the name and location of his engineer or mechanic, something might be able to be done about Havoc.”

The stillness following the statement was palpable.

About a month ago, a group of Eastern soldiers had found their camp and launched an attack. In the end, their small band had triumphed (mainly thanks to Roy’s Flame Alchemy), but their victory had come with a price. As the soldiers had retreated, one had thrown a dagger, hitting Havoc in the base of the spine. He had fallen, red blood staining red leaves, and Roy had barely managed to cauterize the wound right there on the forest floor before he lost too much blood. (Riza had seen it happen from her perch in a maple tree, had almost screamed aloud before remembering that they were still in danger, had buried three arrows in the throat of the man who had stabbed Havoc without a second thought, her vision tinged red.) 

After that day, Havoc’s legs had been useless. He couldn’t support himself, so Roy had alchemized a sort of chair with wheels for him. He couldn’t fight, couldn’t walk, couldn’t move except very slowly around the hard dirt of their well-trodden campsite (the chair didn’t move on softer ground). It was why they had been in this same place for over a month when they would have relocated several days ago to throw the soldiers off their trail. Because Havoc couldn’t move, none of them could. A link had been removed from the chain, and now the chain lay in broken, scattered pieces.

They had been searching for healers ever since, but none had been able to heal him. There had been word of a highly skilled medical alchemist in a small hamlet somewhere in the East area—a Dr. Marcoh—but he had been gone by the time Breda had arrived to request his assistance, most likely snapped up by the soldiers that had started to infect this country like a plague. 

So Havoc now spent his time sitting in the canvas confines of his tent, smoking handmade cigarettes, his mood alternating between normalcy, complete unresponsiveness, and utter fury. The first few days after his injury, he’d held onto some semblance of hope for healing, but he’d quickly plummeted into darkness after that. He had been the most active one in their group; hunting, fighting, running, beating everyone in arm-wrestling contests and crowing his victory to the forest around them. He had been the only one who was strong enough to fire that massive crossbow, the one that Breda now held like it was a sacred relic.

Now all of that was gone, and Riza knew Roy blamed himself. 

Breda was the first to mutter his assent to the plan, followed by Falman, who nodded. Riza glanced over at Roy’s face. A shadow was now hanging over him, a shadow that she knew would refuse to let him rest until they found a way to heal their fallen comrade. Pure, cold focus and determination: she hadn’t seen him like that in a very long time.

Taking a deep breath, she nodded. “I’ll go tell Fuery.”

* * *

Reddened leaves crunched under his feet as he shuffled through the forest next to Al, with Mei bringing up the rear. Each was carrying their pack and had at least one weapon on their person: Ed had preemptively transmuted his automail into a blade (his weapon of choice), Al had chalk for transmutation circles and a small knife in his boot, and Mei had who-knows-how-many of those throwing daggers stashed up her sleeves. Ed sometimes took on the challenge of counting them to pass time, but they all looked the same, and he’d never managed to quite gauge how many she had--whenever he thought she had run out, there would always be more. It was well into autumn now, and the air had a bite to it that couldn’t quite be quenched by regular clothes. The shriveling leaves rattled on trees that would be barren and gray within a month or two, the berries on the bushes were dark and overripe, and he just knew Mei would be complaining about how hard it was to read the qi of the forest within a week.

As if on cue, Mei huffed and pulled the little green coin that she carried everywhere out of the sash of her qipao--she’d said it was made of a stone found only in her home country, ‘jade.’ Ed still didn’t know the purpose of it, all he knew was that whenever she pulled it out, it meant a whole lot of grumpy Mei.

“I can’t see much around us,” she sighed. “All the dead things make it hard to find something living.” Out of context, this statement would be extremely ominous, but both brothers knew that by “dead things” she meant the decomposing leaves beneath their feet. Mei made a fist around the coin, her small palm enclosing it like maybe if she clutched it tight enough she could make the thick, obscuring fog of decay disappear. But who was he to judge, maybe it would. To him, Xingese “alkahestry” was a mystery shrouded in mystique wrapped in a cloak of supposed “spirits.” She had tried to teach Al about it once or twice, but from what Ed had heard, the lessons never went well.

Alphonse patted her shoulder, ever the calming presence. “It’ll be fine. You’re still great at sensing things. No one could ever sneak up on us with you around!”

Ed snorted quietly. Mei blushed and twirled a dark braid around her finger. “Well, I—” She stopped suddenly, stiffening. “Someone’s c-”

There was a thump behind them. Ed whipped around, hands poised to clap, when something flew out from the forest to his left and wrapped around his wrists, forcing his arms together. He staggered backward in surprise, bumping into Alphonse, who had crouched to the ground, frantically trying to make some semblance of a circle in the leaf litter while Mei stood over him, throwing her daggers at their unseen attacker so fast her arms appeared blurred. But they were just knocked back toward her by some invisible blade, clattering harmlessly to the dirt or disappearing into the shadows around them without a sound. Two more thumps sounded from behind him, and he could hear the _shing_ of blades being drawn.

“We’re under attack!” Ed yelled, frantically trying to wrench his arms apart. They seemed to be bound together by a length of twine with weights at either end, crisscrossing neatly around his wrists dozens of times. How had they known to immobilize his hands?

He could hear Mei’s snort, even as she felled a tree with an earsplitting crack. She yanked her daggers from where she’d buried them in the bark and neatly spun them into the undergrowth. “A little late for that!”

Al crouched to the ground, trying to activate his hastily sketched circle. An arrow—thin, black, and unfletched—came hissing lethally out of the shadows, pinning his sleeve cuff to the dirt just outside of the markings. A second followed suit barely half a second later, immobilizing his other arm. He glanced down, shocked, and Ed cursed as creatively as his adrenaline-pumped mind would let him, shaking his arms up and down in an attempt to dislodge the twine. So it was the Hawk’s Eye again, eh? But it looked like she had brought company. Maybe she was in a bandit gang after all-

Something caught Ed’s eye by the huge evergreen to his right and he whipped around, almost stumbling. Was that…a spark? Were these people trying to burn down the forest?

“You have got to be kidding me!” Mei screeched, quickly throwing a few of her daggers into the ground and causing a wall to erupt from the dirt in front of them, temporarily shielding them from the attackers. “Am I the only one who isn’t completely useless-”

A faint popping sound interrupted her, and the hastily constructed earthen wall suddenly exploded in a cloud of smoke and a flash of yellow flames. Ed dropped to the ground, landing on his flesh shoulder—a stroke of luck, as landing on his automail shoulder would have hurt like hell. He didn’t know where Mei was, he thought he could see Al crouched low in the dirt, trying in vain to rip his sleeves free of the arrows, looking absolutely furious with himself.

“Fire!” he heard Mei’s high-pitched voice yell, her panic evident. “Run!”

Were these bandits actually trying to burn down the forest just because they wanted three teenage travelers? Apparently so, because Ed could see and feel the heat of the flickering flames, steadily burning in what looked like a loose, low ring around them—easy to jump over and escape from. But it didn’t seem to be spreading, oddly enough, even though it was burning on dead leaves.

He knelt and yanked the arrows out of Al’s sleeves as quickly as he could with bound hands, using the barbed tip of one to saw through the weighted rope encircling his wrists afterwards. Hands finally free, he clapped them together with a ringing sound and summoned a pillar of earth, carrying him, Al, and Mei several meters above their attackers.

An action that was not very well-thought-out, apparently, as it just made them easier targets for Hawk’s Eye. Unfletched black arrows came whizzing out from inside the leafy shelter of a tree, barely deflected by Mei’s alkahestry (she had managed to throw up an invisible shield around them using her daggers while Ed had been occupied). Luckily, this did give him a general idea of where that blasted archer was.

He clapped as another arrow bounced harmlessly off empty air and Mei’s face beaded with sweat, and, pressing his mismatched palms to the earth below him, sent a horizontal pillar of rock from the bottom of the column they were standing on right to the tree where the arrows were coming from. Its trunk splintered with an earsplitting crack, and he could see a figure leap from the shelter of its leaves, hit the ground in a crouch, and dash back into the forest, longbow held carefully above its head.

Well, shit. That hadn’t worked.

A stifled shriek from behind him made him whip around, hands poised to transmute. Mei stared back at him with wide, terrified black eyes. A strand of flame had reached out from the ring around them to encircle her neck, like a noose (alchemy, although it wasn’t any kind of alchemy Ed had ever seen before). From what he could tell, about four centimeters of space still remained in between her skin and the fire, but her neck was slowly blistering from the heat. She was standing stock-still, something Mei never did.

“Give up,” a male voice rang out. A dark-haired man stepped out from behind a tree, one hand held aloft, clad in a white glove like the ones Ed used to have to conceal his automail. The whip-like line of flame was extended from his fingers, which seemed to be poised to snap.

Ed looked at Alphonse, who was looking more terrified than he had in a long time. He looked at Mei, whose life could be literally snuffed out at any second. And this new bastard, who was smirking like wrapping nooses of fire around young girls’ necks was a favorite pastime of his.

He growled low in his throat, probably sounding like some kind of mountain cat. He couldn’t let Mei die. “Fine,” he snarled. They’d figure something out later.

The man smiled, but it was more like baring his teeth. “Good. Now why don’t you come down from that rock you’re on, and we can talk things through.” The fire noose, still around Mei’s neck, flared brightly. “But one wrong move…”

Golden eyes glared hatefully at him. Ed grudgingly clapped and pressed his hands to the earth below him, and the column supporting them slowly lowered back into the ground. Re-assessing their surroundings, he noticed a small group of men had emerged from the forest, each brandishing a different weapon: one was short with glasses and had two small knives strapped to his belt; one was only a bit taller and rotund, carrying a mace; and another was quite tall, with silverish hair and a ridiculously long sword in a scabbard. As he watched, Hawk's Eye emerged from behind them, longbow held loosely in her right hand. They weren’t bandits, Ed knew for sure now; bandits would never allow an alchemist to join them.

Hawk's Eye narrowed her eyes in their direction, then strode purposefully towards them. Ed thought she was going to retrieve the arrows she’d fired, but instead she stopped next to the dark-haired alchemist and spoke rapidly to him in a low voice. Ed couldn’t make out the words, but she sounded quite angry. Ed watched, confused. After a few moments, the alchemist sighed and lowered his hand. The flame noose vanished, and Mei gasped for air, rubbing her neck.

Ed blinked. Hawk's Eye crossed her arms, satisfied.

“Just what the hell do you want?” Ed finally managed to say.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” the alchemist said coldly. Ed didn’t like the sound of that.

Hawk's Eye sighed and shook her head, then turned to him. “Please come with us for a minute. We don’t want to hurt you.”

Ed’s temper flared. “Oh yeah? Then explain why Sir Matchstick here had a flaming noose wrapped around my friend’s neck?” Didn’t want to hurt them, his ass.

Hawk’s Eye didn’t lift her gaze from his face. It was extremely unsettling. And her eyes weren’t even a unique color, like his or Al’s; they were a normal brown, but somehow still extremely piercing. “I, if no one else, will apologize for that,” she said. The alchemist turned to her, but she kept going before he could say anything. You have my word that it won’t happen again. Now please, come with us.”

Ed glanced at his brother from the corner of his eye. Alphonse gave a tiny nod. They couldn’t risk that flame-noose thing happening again, to Mei or any one of them. They’d go along with these people, see what they wanted, then find the right time to strike. Mei couldn’t communicate with the same minute eye signals the two brothers could, but Ed surmised that she’d have the same idea.

They followed Hawk’s Eye and Sir Smug Matchstick on a winding route through the trees, with the other three men bringing up the rear. There were no restraints, but while Matchstick kept those white gloves on, Ed knew that a single movement could burn them all to a crisp.

He remembered hearing about this man once. Roy Mustang: the Flame Alchemist, he was called. A man who could unleash the flames of hell upon anything with a single snap of his fingers. He had heard the title spoken in hushed tones by a group of villagers about seven months ago, if his internal calendar was correct; the Flame Alchemist, they had said, was one of the most powerful members of the King’s State Alchemists, the group of military alchemists that turned their knowledge and power into weapons. They had said villages that hadn’t paid their taxes in time would be burned down in a single night by this man’s hand. At the time, Ed had shrugged off their words as nothing but hearsay, but now…

Was he still working for the King? Or had he deserted, as many had? Ed resolved he would find out later. A small group of people, no matter how skilled they were with weapons, was much easier to escape from than an entire army that spanned all of Amestris.

Fallen leaves and dead things crunched under the trio’s feet as they followed the Flame Alchemist and his group through the forest, back the way they had come. Mei rubbed her neck. Al shoved a hand in the pocket of his pants, and Ed knew he was reaching for his chalk, just to hold it for reassurance that they would get out of this.

Ed narrowed his eyes and trudged onward.

_to be continued..._


	2. mechanisms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more fantasy stuff, ooooo~  
> this entire au is so self-indulgent I apologize
> 
> (and if the end notes repeat themselves: I know, I’ve seen, and I don’t know how to fix it.)

_“Automail?”_

Ed couldn’t believe it. This group of… _forest vigilantes_ , led by the admittedly powerful Flame Alchemist, had tracked them for miles through a huge forest and threatened to burn Mei’s neck off _just so they could look at his automail?_

Mustang sighed. “Yes, Fullmetal. Automail. Try to keep up.”

Ed frowned. Giving his childhood nickname when he’d been asked his name had been a mistake, now that he thought about it. Even when he’d backtracked and said his name was Elric, and even when Al had said that his first name was Ed (Al seemed to not know about not letting the enemy know more than they should), Mustang _still_ called him Fullmetal. 

Ed’s frown turned into a dark scowl. No _way_ was he giving these bastards any more information. “Whatever you want, you’re not gonna get it. There’s no way I can tell you how it _works,_ if that’s what you're after. Now, if you wanted to talk with my mechan-” He shut his mouth with an audible snap and cursed himself internally as Mustang raised his eyebrows. What kind of idiot was he, almost telling them about Winry and Granny? Maybe they wouldn’t ask questions-

“Oh? Could you take us to your mechanic, then? I’d love to know his secrets on how he makes it.” He gestured at Ed’s arm.

“No!” Ed said, a little louder and more forceful than he had intended to. The only thing that stopped him from leaping up and throttling this man was the memory of what he could do, what he had done to Mei. “I’m not taking you,” he muttered, crossing his arms and looking petulant.

“This isn’t a request, Fullmetal. It’s an order.” Ed realized, too late, the dangerous glint in Mustang’s eyes.

What the hell did they _want_ with automail, anyway? None of them needed it, as far as he could tell; none of the people in their group he’d seen so far had any missing limbs. Ed crossed his arms and leaned back against the barrel he was sitting in front of. “You’re not the boss of me. And why do you wanna know so bad, huh?”

Hawk’s Eye gave Ed a look that was somehow both sympathetic, exasperated, and telling him to shut up all at the same time as Mustang scowled. She’d been standing just a few paces behind during their entire conversation, her back just barely brushing up against the canvas wall of the tent they were inside of. It was like she was guarding him. “Calm yourself, sir,” she said softly. “He doesn’t know. Should we tell him?”

“No,” Mustang snapped back. “He doesn’t need to know.”

“Oi, the ‘he’ you’re talking about is right here. Stop talking about me like I’m not being held captive by you in the middle of a forest.” Ed crossed his arms tighter, as if to keep his knowledge from spilling out by force. They weren’t going to get any information out of him. He was _not_ going to drag Winry into this--whatever this was. If he was being honest with himself, Ed still had no idea what was going on here. Mustang was a deserter, he was sure now, but he still had no idea who the other people were. Subordinates he’d taken with him? Random people he’d just absorbed into his group? Mercenaries? Hawk’s Eye had probably been his subordinate at one point, given the fact that she called him “sir” sometimes, even though it looked like they were just a ragtag group of fighters on the run, like Ed, Al, and Mei were. It was all a big question mark, and it was like Ed had somehow been thrown right in the middle of it.

Hawk’s Eye took a deep breath, glancing down at Mustang before looking straight at Ed. “Edward, we need your assistance. One of our friends doesn’t have working legs. We think your kind of automail might be able to help.” She said all of this very quickly, then took a half-step backwards after she’d finished and glanced back at Mustang, as if waiting for him to get angry at her.

Ed blinked in surprise. This was a new development. Was this ‘friend’ completely paralyzed, or just really beat up, like Al had been? He shuddered slightly, remembering Al’s legs broken and twisted, tears running down his face as he tried not to cry out in pain as the man raised the club higher, preparing to bring it down once more. Ed had never forgiven himself for that day; the stumps of his arm and leg always ached when it rained, never letting him forget how he hadn’t been able to protect his little brother. How he, at least, had been outfitted with automail after his mutilation, while Al had been confined to a wheelchair for almost two years. 

Until they had met Mei.

Ed’s eyes widened. _Mei_. Mei could probably heal whoever this friend of theirs was, given the time and energy she needed; after all, she had managed to get Al out of the wheelchair and back to normal (or almost back to normal) after a few days of healing. A day of unbearable pain and two years of immobility had been resolved in just under a week by that girl’s hand. A part of Ed was still in awe at her skill, but he managed to bury that part under layers of sarcasm and irreverence most of the time. 

But one fact remained: there was no way he was helping these people. There was no way he was telling them about Mei, and no way he was telling them about Winry, either.

He scowled. “No.”

Mustang frowned slightly. “What do you mean by ‘no’?”

Ed gave a sardonic half-grin. “I mean there’s no way I’m helping you people, even if I could.” Mustang opened his mouth, but Ed steamrolled ahead before he could say anything. “Number one, I don’t have any debt to you,” he said, holding up a finger. “Number two, we just met today, and you kidnapped me and my friends, so that’s another mark against you in a long line of ‘em. And number three, there’s no way you can make me.” Too late, he remembered the flaming noose, which could _definitely_ make him, but he’d already made his stand and it was all said and done, so there was no going back.

Mustang’s eyes flared with rage before he managed to school his face into an impassive mask. Behind him, Hawk’s Eye protested quietly, but it looked like she knew she couldn’t do much now. “Listen here, Fullmetal,” he growled, obviously barely managing to keep his anger in check. “One of my men is _paralyzed_ from an attack we endured last month. I know you can help. What I don’t understand is why you can’t have some _basic human decency_ -”

Ed barked out a humorless laugh. “‘Basic human decency’, huh? Might I remind you that this is coming from the guy who nearly strangled my friend with a _goddamn fire noose?_ Forgive me if I don’t want to just roll over and help you after _that_!”

Mustang’s eyes narrowed. “You just don’t understand-”

_“Both of you.”_

Ed was suddenly keenly aware of the two arrows that were now nocked in Hawk’s Eye’s bow. They were pointed at the ground for now, but it was obvious who the arrows were for if the situation didn’t de-escalate. “Please calm down, sir, Edward,” she said, nodding to each of them in turn. The _or else_ wasn’t verbal, but it was heavily implied in her cold-as-ice tone. Now that he thought about it, both arrows were probably for him.

Ed gradually sank back into his makeshift seat, releasing the tension in his posture he hadn’t known was there. Mustang seemed to regain his composure somewhat, slowly leaning backwards as well and scrubbing a hand over his face. Hawk’s Eye nodded infinitesimally and put the arrows back into her quiver. Her bow still remained at the ready, though.

“Take it up with the rest of your group,” Mustang said finally, voice as neutral as if the outburst had never happened. “Your brother and the girl. Get their opinions on the matter. If they are of the same mind as you, we can work something out. If not, you _are_ assisting me. Is that clear?”

Ed scowled. “Yeah, fine. But by ‘work something out’, you mean ‘let us go immediately’, right?”

Mustang’s eyes narrowed again. “Perhaps.”

Ed could take those odds. They were the only odds he had, really. It wasn’t like Al or Mei were going to want to help this whackjob pyromaniac, anyway. 

He slouched out of the tent, rubbing his eyes in the sudden light. Al and Mei were sitting on crates a few paces away, talking in hushed tones. They’d been exempt from Ed’s meeting with Mustang and Hawk’s Eye because Al had said Ed was their leader (which might not be true in all circumstances but was acceptable enough to pass as the truth now). Both snapped to attention as he sat down heavily next to them with a sigh. 

“What happened?” Al asked, straightforward and worried.

Ed didn’t answer immediately. He braced his hands on the ground behind him and leaned back, craning his neck to stare up at the stubborn leaves still clinging to the branches. They’d be gone soon, blown to the ground by wind and frozen to blackened husks before being covered in white powder after the first snowfall. “They want our help,” he said finally.

Mei scowled angrily; the frown would look foreign on her sweet, round face to an outside observer, but Ed and Al knew it was one of her most frequent expressions. “After they nearly killed me?”

Ed threw up his hands, feeling validated. “Exactly! I told ‘em no way, but Sir Matchstick was like ‘take it up with your companions’, so here I am, taking it up with my companions.” He paused. “So? Companions. I need answers. We’re not helping them, correct?”

Al frowned slightly, but it was less of an angry frown and more of a contemplative frown. “Did they say what they needed help _with_?”

Leave it to Al to be the kind and considerate one. “They did,” Ed conceded, and repeated what Hawk’s Eye had told him, ending with “...but I still don’t think we should help them.”

Al blinked. “That’s like what happened to me, isn’t it?”

Ed shrugged. “Well, yeah, but Mustang did say the guy was paralyzed, which is a bit different than the state you were in.” He blinked, remembering a brusque conversation spoken in a country house on a grassy hill, while he’d been trying to take his mind off the pain of his automail being reconnected. “Wait.” Granny had once told him that automail rarely worked on paralytics because the nerve endings were usually completely numb, as opposed to a normal amputation, which left the nerve endings intact. Unless they were the nerve endings in the amputated limb, in which case they were...not there anymore. So whoever had gotten paralyzed couldn’t get automail, making Mustang’s whole Ed-hunt useless. 

Except it wasn’t entirely useless.

Because right now, it always seemed to come back to Mei.

“You figured something out, Brother,” Al said simply.

Ed held up his flesh index finger. “I have. Just gimme a second to work out a plan.”

“So there’s a plan now?” Mei asked, tilting her head to the side.

“Indeed there is. Or the start of one.” If a decision counted as the start of a plan. “The guy Mustang wanted me to help can’t get automail, right?”

Al nodded slowly, but Mei shrugged, utterly bemused. “Hell if I know.”

“Right, right,” Ed said absently, flapping a hand in her direction. “Anyway, he can’t get automail, which makes the whole reason Mustang was hunting us down null and void.” Al was nodding more now, and Mei was nodding too, but Ed suspected she was just copying Al to make herself look like she understood what he was talking about. “But we do have a way to help them that _isn’t_ automail,” he said, lowering his voice. No one was in earshot, but it never hurt to be careful. He almost grinned, enjoying the way Mei and Al were anticipating his next words. “One Mei Chang.”

Mei pointed at herself inquisitively, as if there were any other Mei Changs in the immediate vicinity. Ed sighed. “Yes. That Mei Chang.”

“I didn’t need affirmation of my own name,” Mei snapped. “I was merely confused as to why you thought I could help a paralytic.”

Funny how she could switch moods so quickly. It caught Ed off guard sometimes. “Well, you did heal me,” Al said before Ed could speak. “So you should be able to heal this person as well, correct?” Ed nodded. Those had been his thoughts as well.

Mei slipped a knife from her sleeve and began spinning it on the back of her hand. Using sharp objects as toys as well as weapons was normal for Mei, something the brothers had had to figure out on their own. “I’m not sure,” she said finally, watching the blade whirl in circles. 

Ed and Al looked at each other. It was rare to see Mei admitting she might not be able to do something. She was usually extremely confident in her own abilities--sometimes too confident, actually. 

“I did heal you,” she said to Al. “And it took five days of six-hour sessions. And that was just because your legs were too…well, mangled to walk on. You could still move them, it just…” She broke off, biting her lip and looking up at Al apologetically, as if talking about his former injuries would reopen them.

“It just hurt like the devil,” Al finished for her, appearing unconcerned. “Which is much different than complete or even partial paralysis.” Which is what would have happened to him if Mei hadn’t stumbled across them when she did.

“Right,” Mei said, her tone relieved. “You weren’t paralyzed then. But this person is, and I’ve never even tried healing paralysis before, so I’m not sure if I can.” She turned to Ed, finished.

Ed shrugged. That wasn’t what he was worried about at all. “Yep. You aren’t supposed to, anyways. Because we’re leaving.”

Mei almost gaped. “Then what was that speech for?”

Ed threw up his hands a second time. “You two gave the speech! Not me! I was on board the train out of here from the start, it was you two that were still indecisive!”

Mei scowled. Ed simply scowled back.

“But wouldn’t it be wrong to not help someone, even if the chance we could was slim?” Al asked, knotting his fingers together.

Ed clapped a hand on his brother’s shoulder, shaking his head in the ‘patronizing older brother’ way he rarely used. “Al, I usually love your pure heart, but it’s the last thing we need right now. We’re not helping them because their leader literally tracked us through miles of forest and then put a fire noose around Mei’s neck to force us to come with them. Case closed.”

“We should at least find out if we can help at all first,” Mei said, jutting her chin stubbornly.

Ed groaned and smacked his forehead with his flesh hand (he’d made the mistake of doing that with his automail hand once, and the results had not been enjoyable.) “Might I remind you that at the beginning of this argument you said, and I quote, ‘after they nearly killed me’? Since when did you change your mind about this?”

“Just now,” she answered coldly. “I can do that.”

Ed felt like screaming. “And might I remind you once more that you’re the one that got fire noose-d? Why do you want to help them after that?!”

“I just do!” she said hotly, round cheeks beginning to flush. “I agree with Al, all right? If there’s something we should do, we should try to do it! Even if you hate whoever we’re helping! And--and!” She shoved her small palm in Ed’s face as he opened his mouth. “We’re not even helping the man you hate! We’re helping a completely different person! They just happen to be _with_ that Mustang guy!”

Al pursed his lips worriedly. “We should at least try, brother,” he said, voice sympathetic, although who he was sympathizing with Ed had no idea. It certainly wasn’t his older brother, who was entirely done with this whole debacle.

“Put it to a vote,” Mei huffed, crossing her arms. “All in favor of helping, raise your hand.” She thrust her right arm into the air, glaring at Ed as she did so. Al did the same, although less forcefully.

He couldn’t win. _Why_ couldn’t they just _understand_? They didn’t need to help. They didn’t need to do anything other than get the hell out of this place as quickly and quietly as possible. But the stubborn set of Mei’s jaw and the look in Al’s gold-green eyes made him sigh and finally--for one of the only times in his fifteen years of existence--admit defeat.

“Fine. We try,” he muttered, defeated. “But if it doesn’t work, we’re out of here as soon as I give the word.” Which would be very soon, if he had anything to do with it.

* * *

IMPORTANT NOTE: Are there any experienced writers available here that can beta read my fics? I have more on this that I haven't posted yet, as well as more on some of my other works. I'm participating in the FMA Secret Santa hosted by some wonderful people over on Tumblr, too, and would absolutely love an outsider opinion to make sure that my gift is as good as it can be. Also, I have some completely different fics that I'm thinking of posting, and would love someone to proofread those as well. Comment below if you're interested, or contact me through [Miralia](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/miralia) on Tumblr.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “OoOhHh, Ed would have helped them right off the bat! He’s a kind person!” Yes he is, but he also holds grudges that aren’t exactly unfounded and remember, this is the first time he met Mustang in this AU. And this time, he’s not a traumatized 11-year-old double amputee in a wheelchair, he’s a traumatized 15-year-old double amputee standing on his own 1.3 legs who functions purely on spite and intellect. His reaction here is quite frankly to be expected. And I would have written the Mustang/Ed argument to be longer and more detailed but I literally couldn’t see any other way to do it. Yes, Mustang is a master wordweaver and given free rein, he would have left Ed in the dust, but Ed literally says at the start “Yeah, I don’t care about your people at all. Anyway what’ll you give me” so, again, his reaction is to be expected as well.
> 
> Leave comments and/or kudos if you want more of the Disaster Trio!

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the product of my brain repeatedly ramming itself into a brick wall to get away from work I have to complete. Either that, or the lovechild of my adoration of fantasy and my adoration of FMA. Pick your poison. I literally have no idea what time period this is based on, or the geography, or how much backstory I’m going to change or leave intact. If I had to say, I’d guess the time period/technological advancement is going to be similar to the Ranger’s Apprentice book series, except with automail? Just...please don’t look too hard. 
> 
> Enjoy, and leave comments or kudos to let me know if you want more!
> 
> (Oh yeah, and I kind of changed alchemy theory, although the basic applications and principles are the same. Have fun figuring that out! I also thought up an entirely unnecessary new theory on how alkahestry works in this universe. I might explain it via infodump later.)


End file.
